3GPP Technical Specification 22.368, titled, “Service requirements for Machine-Type Communication (MTC); Stage 1 (Release 11),” and 3GPP Technical Report 37.868, titled, “Study on RAN Improvements for Machine-Type Communications (Release 10),” describe several use cases for MTC monitoring. For example, user equipment (UE) metering devices could monitor municipal utility service usage to periodically report information on energy consumption to service providers. Metering devices may autonomously push reports of usage information to a centralized node in a network, or the centralized node may poll metering devices as reporting information is needed.
Road security is another example application of monitoring. For instance, in the event of a car accident, an in-vehicle emergency call service would autonomously report location information of the car accident to an emergency first responder and thereby facilitate prompt assistance. Other road-security applications for monitoring include intelligent traffic management, automatic ticketing, fleet management, and other uses.
Consumer electronics, including devices such as eBook readers, digital cameras, personal computers, and navigation systems, could also benefit from monitoring. For example, such devices could use monitoring to upgrade firmware or to upload and download online content.